by CCW | 5 April 2012 22:00
“Whatsoever he tells you, do it.” This, too, is Mary’s word, and not altogether unlike her word of response to God at her Annunciation, but it is her word to us at the Wedding Feast in Cana of Galilee. A direction and a command, it follows upon her assessment of the human condition, “they have no wine,” she says. But Christ will provide for us, turning the water into wine, but not before his strange and disturbing word to Mary. “O woman, what is that to you and to me. Mine hour has not yet come.” And not before her direction and command, “whatsoever he tells you, do it.” It is, we might say, but a further extension of her word of response to God, “be it unto me according to thy word.” And as with her so with the Church, and so with us, especially in the week of Christ’s Passion.
Tonight, we meet in the Upper Room with the disciples and Jesus. It, too, is a celebratory event, a celebration of the Passover, a celebration with bread and wine in honour of God’s deliverance of Ancient Israel from slavery in Egypt, a defining event in the culture of the religion of Judaism. But what strange and disturbing things are heard and seen in this Upper Room! “Do this”, Jesus says, to us in the Upper Room; “do this in remembrance of me.” Defining words for Christians.
“He carried himself in his own hands,” Augustine notes, calling attention to the strange marvel of Maundy Thursday, reminding us of the strange wonder of Christ’s words in the Upper Room. He identifies himself with the elements of the Passover Feast; the bread and the wine of the celebration of the Passover are spoken of here as his body and his blood, the bread and wine of liberation and salvation. What kind of provision is this and how shall we understand it?
Only through the unfolding of his hour. The hour which has not yet come now approaches, the hour of betrayal and trial, the hour of passion and death, the hour of crucifixion. In a way, what it means is already signaled here in the Upper Room. “Take eat …Drink this.” “Do this in remembrance of me.” A form of remembrance that is equally about our participation in what is signified. And what is signified is his passion and crucifixion.
“In the same night that he was betrayed”, this night, this very night, Christ gives himself into our hands. Maundy Thursday celebrates the significance of what he does and what he says. It is the new commandment, novum mandatum. “A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you” But the word is also a deed, “take eat, this is my body…this is my blood.” How? By what he endures and wills to endure for us on the Cross of Good Friday. The Cross is present by anticipation; its sorrows already colour the joys of fellowship. All our betrayals are at hand. “Do this”, he says, at once anticipating the full meaning of his own doing of his Father’s will for us and for our salvation and, at the same time, providing for our continual benefit. We live for and from the sacrifice of Christ.
“Whatever he tells you to do, do it,” Mary says. Far from being an encouragement to mindless obedience, it signifies the very meaning of the life of the Church. The task of Holy Week is to call to mind the words and deeds of Christ and to let those words define us even as God’s word defines Mary. The purpose is to contemplate, in the proclamation of the Passion, all that belongs to the spectacle of Christ crucified, all that belongs to what he wills to do for us. That is the point. The new commandment is not only proclaimed; it is enacted in the very sacrifice of Christ for us.
And our response? To do as he has done for us; for it to be unto us according to his word. “Do this” is his word. “Do this,” he says, because to eat and drink the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ is not simply about our taking; it is about our willing what Christ has willed and done for us. What he wills is at the heart of what he does; he wills to bear our betrayals of his love.
At the heart of the new commandment to love is love in action; here at the Passover meal and, there, tomorrow, on the Cross. All of the events of the Triduum Sacrum show forth the love of Christ. They compel us. But only by way of our remembrance, by way of our calling to mind the hour of Christ. Only so can we participate in what he does for us.
Every celebration of the Holy Eucharist, recalls us to that hour and its meaning. Here “in the same night that he was betrayed”, he anticipates his passion and its meaning for us sacramentally, carrying himself in his own hands, as it were, and giving himself into our hands, our hands of betrayal and deceit, our hands of cruelty and death. The new commandment to love compels us to lives of sacrifice and service, the sacrifice and service which he exemplifies and provides for us so that it may live in us. But only if we will what he wills for us, to do in remembrance of him, even as Mary has told us, “whatever he tells you do it”, but even more as Mary herself has said, “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Fr. David Curry,
Maundy Thursday, 2012
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